Forty Days was recorded by Paul Kelly in exactly that very period of time while quarantined due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In keeping with the Australian’s ever-so-diverse discography, the album contains fifteen total tracks comprised of original songs, spoken word/poetry interludes and some select covers including John Prine’s “Paradise” Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands.” Described as a gift to fans, this twenty-sixth album of the man’s yet again reaffirms his fundamental virtues as a truly exceptional songwriter and recording artist.
Paul Kelly has never been prone to trading in truisms, but he might well agree this record illustrates the precept that ‘necessity is the mother of invention.” Along those same lines, Forty Days is an object lesson in capturing the proverbial lightning in a bottle: it sounds like it was recorded in one fell swoop of inspired writing, playing, singing and speaking. And Kelly is hardly a stranger to solo performance: the format is, after all, the foundation of 2010’s concert compendium The A to Z Recordings. All that said, it’s a rare composure that comes into play here, particularly it when it takes the wry form of “Pub With No Beer,” a cheerful ode to self-denial if there ever was one.
That humorous narrative is an indirect commentary on the circumstances in which Paul recorded this thirty-five minutes. Meanwhile, “September 1, 1939,” the the initial spoken word interlude (of five total here), is a more overt observation on isolation vs. connection: its title derives from the date on which started World War II. Unsettling as that sounds, the jaunty take on Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’” is a balm for the soul and not just because it’s such a familiar tune, but because Paul Kelly fully inhabits the mood (and vice-versa). Yet he’s just as deeply immersed in the rumination of “You And Sarajevo,” equal parts disturbed and disturbing.
The quick succession of two further such segments, “Hope Is The Thing With Feathers” and “Everything Is Plundered,” allows Kelly to elicit an even greater sense of relief from “Passed Over.” And from “Paradise,” as well, despite the fact the former is the story of an unexpected death and the latter sounds like a pipe dream. On “Thoughts in the Middle of the Night,” Kelly sings about that to which “Four AM” actually refers, but during both, he maintains a healthy detachment from unnerving late night-early morning mental machinations by likening them to the tuneful sound of bird calls at dawn.
The impromptu nature of Forty Days becomes wholly prevalent when Paul whispers and mutes his acoustic guitar strumming. The (re)appearance of “Sonnet 73,” ( from 2016’s Seven Sonnets and a Song) finds this rare artist confronting his isolation through his vocation and, by extension, his chosen lifestyle. And, in a fundamentally altruistic gesture, he conveys to listeners the thought they might subsist in equally able, self-reliant fashion. The hope for deliverance within “My Island Home” is exactly the succor so welcome at such a time, he suggests, no matter how incongruous and impractical the option might sound for those unemployed.
“Stumbling Block” speaks directly to the scenario that was the source of these recordings. But because, aside from a little sardonic humor, Paul Kelly’s performance carries more than a whiff of desperation, he’s pointedly addressing the larger predicament of how to deal with a significant life challenge. He may sound a bit wobbly as he sings and plays this number—is he trying to convince himself of its truth?–but that’s a measure of his well-established ability to create characters and sustain dramatic narratives even as they arise from his own experience. The man enhances the drama of this track by speaking both in and out of character.
Forty Days thus proffers a particular (peculiar?) state of grace. It’s an optimism perhaps difficult to grasp, and certainly one not so easily attained or maintained in such tumultuous times as these. Yet it’s a world view at the heart of Paul Kelly’s most memorable work, so this one man’s statement of purpose becomes aspirational, not just for himself, but for anyone who hears it.
